38

For the second time in less than twelve hours, Lou hesitated outside Tom’s bedroom. But on this occasion, the singing downstairs reminded her there was no time for indecision. She pushed the door open, and as she crossed the threshold, an invisible hand reached inside her chest and gripped her heart.

There were books laid out on the table as though the reader had just placed them down, an ashtray, complete with cigarette stubs on the arm of the chair, a pair of riding boots beside the fireplace, and a battered suitcase beside the bed.

Lou clutched the key. The teeth biting into her hand brought back to herself. If she was going to go rooting around in this room, then she had to do it now, before someone came and found her and wanted to know what the hell she was doing sneaking around where she had no right to be.

Summoning what little historian’s dispassion she could muster, she crossed the room, but in the few steps it took to reach the desk, all trace of dispassion fizzled away. Her hand shook as she turned the key in the lock and pushed up the roll top lid. The dry wood rattled as it laboured along the metal tracks and a musty smell escaped. It was the scent of old paper, of ink dried to a crust in an open bottle, of pencil shavings that had lain where they had fallen one hundred years earlier. And, amidst the bottles and papers and shavings, sat a parcel.

Lou stared at it for a moment. She reached and ran her fingertips over the brittle brown paper, a swell of nerves surging in her stomach. Who was she to open this package that had been hidden for a century; which had become a part of the fabric of this house, a part of its mythology? She fingered the string holding the paper in place. Who had wrapped this parcel so neatly and taking such great care? Had it been Sally, or Charlotte, or both? Charlotte. She had lived. She had not just lived, she had thrived. And along with Sally, she had wanted Lou to have whatever this parcel contained.

A breath escaped Lou’s lips, and before she could talk herself out of it, she pulled the end of the string. The neat bow unravelled and a flurry of fibres drifted to the floor. She carefully prised back the paper. Her heart leapt and instantly sank.

Wrapped inside the neat folds was a slim buff-coloured volume, its once pristine leather cover now worn, faded and water-stained. Lou pressed the surface of the book. Every memory attached to the book seeped into her fingertips. She saw Tom in the library, smiling at her, teasing that he only read Shakespeare’s sonnets. She saw herself pretending to read the philosophy before the fire in the morning room, when she was so sure that she could help the Mandevilles. But, most vivid of all, was the memory of Tom standing before her last night, confessing that he had read Plato’s words to feel close to her. He had taken this book to France with him. It had touched his personal possessions, his shaving things, his clothes, his uniform. Had he read Plato’s words again to feel close to her? A piece of paper stuck from the pages of the book. She pulled it free. Yellowed with age, the story torn from the page of a newspaper was dated 30 August 1914. Beneath the headline ‘The Fall of a Hero’, and in large bold text, was a quote from Sir Charles.